


You Did Good

by mortalitasi



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Angst, Family, Friendship, Gen, General, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-25
Updated: 2014-08-25
Packaged: 2018-02-14 15:15:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2196663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mortalitasi/pseuds/mortalitasi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four times Anderson responds, and the one he doesn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Did Good

The first time she leans on him the way he meant her to it’s the night after Akuze. She’s sitting in a sterile ward hooked up to IVs and machines that say things and spit out readings she can’t understand and the lights are being turned out by the nurses when she asks for a holo-call. The nurse tells her to make it quick but she doesn’t listen because her hands tremble as she punches the correct frequency into her omni-tool. She waits until the nurse is gone to make it go through.

She’s too ashamed to turn on the camera feed— she’s supposed to be scarred and damaged already, but if that’s so she can’t understand why she still feels scared or why she knows that she’ll never sleep the same again. One of the nurses had turned on the entertainment channel on the communal screen in the afternoon and she’d torn out her IV trying to get away from the sounds. She’d been screaming something about Toombs and Hilary and taking cover when they’d put her down with sedatives. 

She’d woken up here, in the section of the hospital cordoned off for the psychiatrically sensitive patients.

The drugs give you only a false calm: your body slows down but your mind still races, and hers is racing like a thoroughbred when the other line on the end of the connection goes open. He’s probably at a meeting or having downtime. She shouldn’t have bothered him. 

"Hello?" 

For a long minute all she can hear is the sucking sound of her desperate, panicked breathing. Her heart pounds between her ribs, pounds until she’s pretty sure she’s nothing but a drum and her heart is the mallet. She can hear the rushing of it in her ears.  _She shouldn’t have bothered him._

"…Anderson?"

"I’m here, Shepard."

That’s when she lets go. The tone of his voice undoes something knotted deep within her, and the trembling starts again. Little discrepancies in the display of her omni-tool flicker in and out of existence as the tears drop down on her arm, and then she’s sobbing, trying to muffle the sound against the back of her knees, trying to stuff her fists into her mouth so she can believe she’s not breaking down like this with an audience in attendance.

But he doesn’t speak, and that tells her much more than anything he could say. 

—

The second is far more literal, the day she stumbles out of a shuttle on crutches, blinking against the daylight sun, the first time she’s seen him in person for months. He looks better, maybe older, and she tells him that— it earns her a friendly smack over the back of the head.

When she can’t climb the stairs of the Academy on her own, he offers her an arm, and she takes it. 

Halfway up, she goes, “Anderson?” and he makes a small, noncommittal sound. He’s never been one for many words. 

"Thanks."

He smiles, just a little, and the arm around hers tightens its grip. 

"Don’t mention it."

—

The third happens sometime into the beginning weeks of her chasing Saren. She’s tired, sleepless, and there are too many unknowns in play. The medbay’s occupied, now, and she’s pretty sure the blue archaeologist with the funny eyebrows (she’s never seen an asari with eyebrows before) keeps regular hours even if she doesn’t. 

He takes a while to pick up, but she has all the time in the world, so she waits with a glass of scotch in one hand and omni-tool in the other. 

They spend most of the call talking— it’s only at the end of things that she manages to say what she really wants to. That’s a bad habit of hers. One day, she thinks— _knows_ — it won’t be an option to wait, and she’ll have to live with the silence forever. It’s thoughts like those that scare her, so she pushes it aside for a while. 

"Anderson?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you think we can really do it? Catch him?"

He laughs some. It’s nice to hear after everything that’s happened this month. 

"Let me be clear with you on this one: if anyone’s qualified for the job, Shepard, it’s you. I know you can do this."

She grins into her glass. “I wish I had your confidence.”

—

The fourth— the day they leave Earth, bits and pieces of what they used to be, with Ashley suspicious and Vega unhappy, and she’s not sure she can do this without him. 

"I have to stay," he shouts over the sudden squall that the Normandy’s engines are kicking up. There’s blood on his dress blues, and it’s not his. "These men need a leader."

 _I need you_ , she wants to scream, but the words die in her mouth. 

"Anderson?"

He looks up at her, shielding his eyes from the glare. She grips the Avenger in her hands so tight it feels like her knuckles are going to pop straight out of her skin. 

"Good luck."

—

Nothing sounds frightening in space. She’d learned that two years ago as she died in orbit of a cold star, alone, quiet, with nothing but the rhythm of her failing lungs to comfort her. She feels a lot like that now. The red on her hands is blurring. She can barely make out the difference between Crucible and Alliance ship in the glowing vista laid out before them— Earth, burning, ravaged, torn. 

The Illusive Man’s body lies not too far away from them. The pistol he used to blow the back of his head off is still clutched in his hand, the fingers locked around the trigger. She has a thing for convincing people to shoot themselves. If she weren’t bleeding out, she’d have found it funny. Joker would appreciate the sentiment, she’s sure. 

"We did it." That’s under her breath. 

Nothing in the room moves. Nothing except the far-off, dreamlike vision of Earth with fire in its clouds and Reaper ships scattering and falling in some twisted version of a meteor shower. She doesn’t want to say it. If she does, that’ll make this real. It will make all of this real. And what’s real doesn’t change.

“ _Anderson_?” 


End file.
